


Lowest point

by RedChucks



Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Depression, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, past Dan/Jones, post window jump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 12:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13717992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedChucks/pseuds/RedChucks
Summary: Trashbat TV is happening, Dan is alone.A disjointed journey.





	1. Chapter 1

The final credits had rolled. The final humiliations had been laid across his shoulders like a horrific mantle and the characters in the bloody tragicomedy that was his life had all made their bows and exited. Dan’s life, as far as he was concerned, had faded to black. There was no redemption, no grace, nothing to save him from the hell that was his life. It was a fact. It was a reality. And then in to that reality, wearing a scruffy pink t-shirt, walked Jones, and Dan hoped. But there was no redemption.

“I’m moving on, Dan,” Jones told him in a voice laced with emotion. “I’ve got to. I can’t be part of this any more. But you’re welcome to the house, if you want. It’s sublet so...” he shuffled his feet, scuffed trainers catching on the lino flooring, his eyes averted like he couldn’t bare to look Dan in the eye, when usually it was Dan dodging eye contact and Jones doing the searching. “The real Jones, the first Jones, whoever he was, is long gone, I doubt he cares who’s using his name for the lease now but... I just have to move on, Dan. It’s all gone to shit and I’m over it,” he shrugged. “And I can’t keep bailing you out and patching you up cos when I do you just find someway to break yourself worse... and we don’t fuck no more and... we’re not even really friends no more, Dan. So I’m moving on. Gonna try my luck on the continent, yeah?” He waited but Dan didn’t answer and the silence began to prickle against his skin. “I made you this,” Jones said eventually, flicking flimsy, plastic, CD case on to the bed so that it bumped against Dan’s fingers. “Bye, Dan.”

He nodded and then stood in awkward silence, waiting once more for Dan to respond, but Dan just stared at the CD case until, with a final glance in his direction, Jones sighed and walked out. And that was the end of it, that was the finale, the final nail in the coffin of the Dan Ashcroft story. Except that he was still frustratingly alive.

A voice in his head informed him that he was being a melodramatic tit but another voice pointed out that if he was ever allowed to be melodramatic it was after being dumped by his boyfriend on the same day he’d jumped out of a window. And if no one was around to see him be melodramatic did it really even count? He considered ending things for good but a quick look around his room showed that he obviously wasn’t being trusted with scissors or shoe laces, and the window didn’t even have the capacity to open, not that he could have made it across the room in his state anyway.

He was stuck. Stuck in his body, stuck in his life, stuck in the endless cycle of idiots and pain, stuck in Nathan fucking Barley’s TV series. And the one good thing he’d had going, the one thing he didn’t actually want to fuck up, had just walked out of his life. And he didn’t even know the fucker’s real name.

He turned his head, leaning in to the pain it caused, and stared down at the CD again. He brushed the corner of it, feeling the sharp zing of pain from his grazed fingertips, and then did it again, shuddering at the sensation. He was grazed all over, everything hurt, and that was his only comfort. 

He couldn’t even reach his discman to listen to whatever Jones had left him as a parting gift, couldn’t bend his arm to pick it up properly or open it so settled for staring at it and reminding himself that being alone and abandoned was what he truly deserved.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dear Dan,_

_I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us. Really I am, cos I still really love you and hate that things fell apart. But I’ve learnt that most of the time it’s better to choose when I leave and to do it before it’s too late. I’m choosing to leave now, even though I love you, cos honestly mate, you fucked up. I don’t care who knows I’m into blokes but you wouldn’t even tell your sister we were an item and she lived with us for a month! And we probably could have worked things out at that point, you know? But Dan, you went and wanked off a builder. And you didn’t fucking tell me about it. I had to read it in that shit rag. Do you have any idea how that felt?_

_And what were you trying to prove? That you’re straight? But you’ll pull off a dude under duress? Even though it, and I quote, “sickens you”? Because honestly Dan, that just about killed me, and like an idiot I waited around for you to talk to me about it, own up to it, but you don’t do honest do you Dan? You’re so egocentric, so self-absorbed, like you’re the main character in your own book, but you’re not, and I’m tired of being an unnamed extra in your drama._

_I’d made the decision to move on before I found out you’d jumped out of Barley’s window and I honestly thought about staying, but do you know what would’ve happened if I did? I’d end up your nurse maid, and you’d hate me for it, and I’d be stuck, and we’d end up hating each other so much, with no way out. I can’t get trapped like that, mate. I just can’t. So I’m shipping out. You know the deal with the lease, just keep it floating along when you leave._

_I’m sorry, Dan. Not sorry that I’m leaving, but sorry we couldn’t make it work. I thought we had something but really, I don’t think you ever actually saw me, I think I was just, I dunno, convenient for you. I hope things work out for you. I hope you come to your senses before you completely self destruct. I’m giving you a copy of this album because it just came out and I never got a chance to make you listen to it, but it reckon it’s right up your street. I would’ve loved to know what you think of it. Maybe one day, yeah?_

_With a whole lot of love,_

_Art “Jones” Edwards._


	3. Chapter 3

Dan listened to the album again, letting the rawness of it seep in to him, unable to stop the smile that kept tugging at his lips at the sound of the guitar, the piano, the rough voice. It was just the sort of thing he liked, Jones had been right, and he wished, again, that he could have gushed to his ex about how good it was. But Jones was gone and he was sat on the creaking sofa with only Claire for company, and she was really no company at all. 

In all honesty he agreed with her that releasing someone twenty-four hours after a window jump wasn’t a great move, and could definitely be blamed on the “damn Tories” and their funding cuts, as Claire had put it, but he wasn’t in the mood for a political conversation, not when his leg was hurting as bad as it was. Not when he had been handed Barley’s sorry excuse for a script an hour ago along with a copy of the contract he’d signed while barely conscious and pumped full of pain killers. Not when his chest was aching and it had nothing to do with bruised ribs and everything to with the empty space in the room when Jones’s decks had used to be. 

He couldn’t think of him as anything other than Jones, even knowing he had a different name, even knowing the stories about the house, how there’d always been a Jones in the House of Jones, he couldn’t process the fact that his Jones had a different name, and a past that Dan had never bothered to learn. And a future that Dan wasn’t part of. 

He hadn’t taken a lot with him, other than his equipment, and Dan began to wonder whether the accessories and quirks of the house, which he had always assumed were Jones’s doing, were actually the work of some past tenant, some past Jones. It made his head ache.

“Dan, are you listening?” Claire’s voice broke through the smog of his musing and he looked up, removing one ear bud to show he was at least trying to listen, not that she seemed impressed at his efforts. “Dan, do you still have a concussion? Do I need to be keeping you awake? All that doctor said was to make an appointment with your GP for follow up and that you were surprisingly sound considering the height you fell from. I mean, who even uses a phrase like ‘surprisingly sound’ anyway? Dan?”

“Hmm?” Dan looked up wearily. “Dunno. It’s a priggish thing to say, you’re right. He was a prick.”

“You don’t even have a GP,” Claire mumbled darkly. “You don’t have anything.”

He considered poking fun at the way Claire’s brows had drawn together so much in her anger that it looked like she had a mono brow, but couldn’t bring himself to bother. Instead he let his eyes drift back over to the empty corner and the lines of dust they showed where speakers and crates had once sat. 

“Where is Jones, Dan?” Claire asked after a moments pause, and Dan looked up to see that she had turned to follow his eye-line and was staring at the empty space like she had only just noticed that anything was different. “I haven’t seen him at all since before you jumped. Is he out of town? Does he even know what happened?”

“He knows,” Dan grunted, clearing his throat as his voice came out sounding like he was gargling gravel. “He’s... moved on. He told me so. Came to see me, to say goodbye. To break-“ he paused. 

Dan had never been comfortable with his sexuality. Growing up, the only openly bisexual men he had known about had been flamboyant and androgynous and while Dan had found them attractive he hadn’t been able to connect with them as roll models. He’d never really found any one to look up to, in that way, anyone who was a bit like him in style and looks, but who was also bi. It was much easier to act like he was straight and repress his reactions to men. The only person he’d ever come close to telling had been Claire, back when they were teenagers and had actually shared things. He hadn’t been brave enough then and he was no  braver now, only now it seemed he didn’t need to be, because Claire’s eyes had widened, like she’d just had put all of the pieces together.

“I knew it!” she hissed, but Dan glared and sunk down further in to the sofa, breathing in to to the wave of pain the action sent rippling through his joints.

“No you didn’t,” he growled, but Claire sat beside him with an earnest and excited expression.

“I did! You’re the only one Jones would ever shut his noise down for, for a start. And he’d go all starry eyed at you whenever you entered the room. I thought you were oblivious at first but then I saw you looking at him like you wanted to just pounce on him. Dan, are you and he- were you and he, you know, a thing?”

The way she said it made Dan cringe but he nodded all the same because it saved him having to explain, though the hug Claire gave him then caused him to cringe even more. 

“Christ sake, Claire,” he grumbled when she moved away, though the ache and throb in his bruised arm and shoulder wasn’t all bad.

“Sorry,” she replied snarkily. “I’ll just let you mope then shall I? As if we haven’t got enough to mope about as it is, with the filming of Barley’s pilot starting in under a week. God, I don’t know why I aid yes. Why did I say yes? And now we have to worry about Jones’s third of the rent as well. What a nightmare.”

Dan was relieved when she sighed and wandered out to the kitchen to make tea but he couldn’t really argue with her worries. He’d read over the lease agreements, both the official one, which some bloke named Jones had signed almost twenty years ago, and the one he’d drawn up to sublet the place soon after that, but he wasn’t sure how well he understood it all, and he hadn’t ever mentioned it to Claire. Leases and rent and bills were too real, too adult, and they made Dan feel ill, which was as good a reason as any to ignore them. But he couldn’t ignore the truth of Jones’s absence. The silence was pressing in on him like a panic attack and he had no way of grounding himself or focusing his mind. 

He pressed his unbroken hand down on the bruises of his thigh instead, letting out a breath at the small moment of relief which didn’t last. He put the earbud back in place and turned up the volume on Jones’s last gift, trying to lose himself in the grief and pain in the music, and pressed down on his thigh again. Maybe if he just closed his eyes the world would stop and he wouldn’t have to carry on with life. Maybe if he lay so still that he melted in to the sofa people would just forget he had ever existed and not bother him anymore. Maybe if he took enough oxycodone he could close his eyes and never wake up. That would solve all of his problems, surely.


	4. Chapter 4

“Cut!” Nathan yelled. “That’s a wrap, cock munchers! That’s a wrap on the pilot of Trashbat and the beginning of a whole new era of television gold!” 

Dan felt his breath leave him like an untied balloon slipping away from clumsy fingers and sat down heavily on the chair Claire had insisted he have within easy reach. His leg was hurting like a bitch, and itching like one too, and he felt sure that when they finally cut the damn plaster off they would find some sort of moss or mildew growing. Nathan would probably be there filming it all too, and Dan would have to put up with a practically brain dead crew telling him that his infested cast was well righteous and sick and some other nonsense. And Dan would be powerless to stop them, just like he was now. 

His only consolation was that the pilot was so bad that no one would ever want to actually commission it. It would be soundly rejected and that would be the end of it. Dan would be free to crawl in to his bed and never leave it. Not until someone turned up to evict him in any case. 

He looked around for his crutches and wasn’t surprised to find that they weren’t where he’d left them. It had become a running joke, to hide Dan’s crutches and leave him stranded. The first time it’d happened he’d decided to simply not react and had sat on his chair for a good hour, knowing he was being watched by Barley and his idiots, hoping that eventually someone would come to their senses and return them, but no one had, and it had been a long and painful limp through the studio to the exit and an uncomfortable journey home on the bus. The next day the crutches had been leaning against the door to the studios and Dan had hoped the game was over. He should have remembered he was never so lucky. Thwo days later it had happened again, only that time he’d tripped over the damn things, which had been propped up against the men’s room door where he couldn’t see them until it was too late. It had been the worst two weeks of his life but Dan had held on and it was finally over. He could go home and drink until he choked on his own vomit. Once he tracked down the damn crutches.

“Hey, Dan! You not staying for the wrap party?” Nathan called out to him as he stumbled painfully toward the exit.

He raised his finger in response, not even bothering to look back, not wanting to set eyes on the king of all wankers now that he didn’t have to. If he did he’d probably punch the twat.

“There’ll be a free bar!”

Dan stopped. All he had at home were two beers and half a bottle of vodka, which wouldn’t be enough on its own to even get him blackout drunk. His palms itched and sweat began to bead on his forehead at the mention of a free bar, at the thought of it. God he wanted to drink without worrying about using up his dwindling finances. Hating himself he turned around slowly, breathing harshly as he caught sight of Barley and the shit eating grin on his ugly face.

“One drink,” he lied through clenched teeth. “One drink and then I’m gone from this shit hole and never coming back.”


	5. Chapter 5

Trashbat was dynamic, hard hitting, confronting. Trashbat was everything the TV execs were looking for apparently and was fast tracked for a series. Nathan was strutting about like he was king of the fucking farm yard and yelling inane suggestions to the crew, who ignored him without exception. Claire looked permanently stressed but assured Dan that she was using the experience to meet people and build network connections. Dan just wanted to die. The executive producer had been disappointed that Dan had finally gotten rid of both his wrist and leg casts and had decided that new ones needed to be made, to keep with the “Trashbat look”. Dan hadn’t had the words to argue and was relieved to discover that the wardrobe department had been able to create mock casts which Dan could take off between takes and at the end of each day. The damn things made him feel claustrophobic in a way the real ones never had and he’d been panicking enough about the scaffolding he was having to stand on to shoot his opening monologue for the second episode without the added insecurity of the casts and the fear that if he fell he only had one hand free to try and stop himself plunging on to the concrete below. 

To keep up with the ever changing trends and slang of the Shoreditch youth culture the decision had been made to screen each episode as it was completed and to film as much of the show on location as they could as well, supposedly to give it a current and cutting edge appeal. Dan thought it was just another level of wank in an already gutter worthy, piss stain of a show, but he didn’t bother to say as much. There was already a “buzz” around the show, he’d been told, but Dan refused to believe it. It was all fake and he hated it.

Even his angry rants had been scripted and he had no say in what he said on camera. The pieces he was given to say sounded enough like his style to probably fool every idiot in the city but to Dan they rankled. He suspected Jonatton Yeah? was behind them. He was the only person Dan knew who could imitate his style and manage to leave a bitter taste in Dan’s mouth as well. He was probably getting paid better than Dan was too, that would certainly fit with the narrative of Dan’s life.

He looked over the edge of the scaffolding as the sound engineer fiddled with her equipment a few meters away. She was wearing a safety harness but Dan wasn’t because Nathan argued that Dan the Preacher Man wouldn’t bother with one. Dan had shrugged when asked his opinion. He honestly hadn’t cared when he was standing on the ground looking up but now, looking down, he felt sicker than he had when he woke up face down in a puddle of tequila. It had seeped in to the carpet and he’d cursed it for not being enough to drown him before rolling on to his back to stare at the ceiling and feel the weight of the absence of Jones. 

It had been two months since he’d left and Dan had wished for death every day but hadn’t been proactive enough to do anything to actually end his life. He was too much of a coward. He’d googled him though, which had been strangely terrifying. At first he’d jut stared at the screen, wondering what to type and then he’d thought maybe he should search for Art Edwards except that it just seemed wrong. Eventually he’d typed in ‘Jones, DJ, Europe’ half hoping there would be no results, but half a second later a photo of Jones had appeared on the screen alongside details for his gigs at a club in Amsterdam. There wasn’t much but somehow just knowing which city he was in was comforting. Jones was alive and well and doing what he said he was going to and doing it well enough to survive.

He wondered whether Jones had googled him, whether he’d seen just how badly Dan’s life was going, whether he cared. Whether he... still loved Dan liked he’d claimed to do the day he left. The House of Jones was a silent shell without him and Dan was behind on the rent.

Blinking rapidly he refocused on where he was, standing precariously on a tall piece of scaffolding as it rocked against a decrepit looking building in a high wind. He couldn’t very well jump from this, he decided, because the damn thing wasn’t much higher off the ground than Barley’s window had been and that hadn’t killed him, it’d just weakened him so he couldn’t run away. If he was going to end things he would have to make sure to do it properly and besides, the sound tech was a decent human being and it wouldn’t be fair for her to watch him fall. He was a prat for sure but he wasn’t a complete dick. He’d just have to leave it for another time.

The tech smiled at him as she positioned the mic a few inches from his face and just out of shot, and the camera operator gave them both a cheery wave as he climbed up and in to position on the scaffold, and from somewhere below them on the street Barley’s voice called “Action”. Dan sighed before launching in to the latest pickled monologue, the vinegar of the words sticking in his throat as he pretended to care. In his pocket Jones’s beat-up discman bumped against his hip, aggravating the bruise that he wouldn’t allow to heal. That was the one thing really keeping him alive. He wanted to be able to tell Jones how good the album was, track by track, in detail. He couldn’t do that if he was dead.


	6. Chapter 6

“What are you fucking thinking, Dan? You’ve always been a mess but turning up to set still actually drunk? Are you mad? And with a fucking head wound, Dan. What the hell!”

Dan knew that the expected responses to his sister’s diatribe were to either get angry and tell her to fuck off, or to apologise and act repentant. The first option would allow Claire to continue to yell and work off the rage that she had on the simmer, the second option would allow her to coddle him and take care of him, which he knew she really did want to do, even if she hadn’t done it for years. It had been their dynamic before they’d moved to London. He would fuck up, she would make him soup and tell him he was an idiot. It had been a good system.

He looked up at his sister, which was more like looking down because somewhere along the way he’d grown and she’d stopped and he still hadn’t adjusted, but he had to lift his eyes from the floor, so it was enough like looking up as made no difference. But when his eyes met hers he couldn’t say anything, angry or otherwise, and wanted to apologise for letting her down, but couldn’t do that either. He looked away. Claire just sighed.

“Where are your shoes?”

Episode three of Trashbat TV had exceeded ratings expectations, apparently. They’d been originally contracted for six episodes but it had somehow become ten and a second series was already secured and Dan felt he’d fallen in to some sort of alternate reality where people weren’t reading books anymore, or even watching properly scripted television anymore, and where idiocy was like currency. He had no words for how he hated it. He had no words for anything anymore. He’d just about given up on everything, including death, because of this wasn’t a twisted parallel world then surely it was a custom built hell and if he was in hell then death really wasn’t an option. There were no options anymore. 

He didn’t know where his shoes were. 

Barley loved Dan’s appearance and had told make-up to just work around the dry blood on Dan’s forehead from falling down his front steps that morning, and told wardrobe not to bother with shoes. Shambolic, train wreck, Dan Ashcroft was what the public wanted, apparently, and no one seemed to really understand that it was less an act or character and more a desperate cry for help. There was even booze in his dressing room, which he knew was the opposite of all things good and healthy but which he drank anyway. He’d been recognised again on his way to work and called Preacherman by a group of men in ridiculous novelty glasses and tiny hats and if nothing else he hoped the alcohol would kill off enough brain cells to erase the memory. It was a long shot. The only thing his brain had managed to permanently delete from his memory wast his PIN, which meant he hadn’t accessed his bank account in weeks and was living off the lunch spread that the studio put on each day. Today was Thursday, the last day of shooting for that week, and Dan already had plans to sneak as many sandwiches home with him as would fit in his pockets.

Glaring at his reflection in the dressing room mirror Dan fumbled his way to the one pocket that wouldn’t end the day full of crumbs and regret and fished out his ear buds. He’d picked up a new CD a few days ago, had it given to him actually, when the kid who ran the record store near his bus stop recognised him. He’d just been looking but had apparently spoken out loud when he found a copy of what he just thought of as ‘Jones’s CD’ and the guy’s eyes had lit up and he’d thrust a CD in Dan’s limp hand babbling that if he liked The Mountain Goats he’d probably like The Weakerthans too.

Dan had tried to say no, because he really didn’t have the cash, but the kid had insisted and said that if Dan was really worried he could pay back the favour by giving it a positive review and his signature. Dan had written a review of the first album on the spot: _“Beautiful melancholia. Poetic enough to break your heart with enough humour to ease the pain. Five stars. Dan Ashcroft.”_ then legged it down the street before the kid could change his mind. 

It had been the single positive moment of his month and had left him feeling a little nauseous. He wasn’t used to such easy kindness, not since Jones. He’d go back again, write a review of the new CD. It was good. More folky but still wry and well put together. It had almost made him crack a smile.

The knock on his dressing room door jolted him back to reality and the ache that formed in his ribs reminded him that there was no room for happiness here. He took a last swig of vodka, wincing at the taste, grabbed his script, and loped out to face another day of constant anxiety and sickening regret.

“Hey, Preach!” Nathan greeted him in an exaggerated whisper, grinning like a monkey that’d just eaten the contents of its neighbour’s nostril and enjoyed it. “How fuckin’ real is this, yeah? We’ve set up a fake audition, right, for a BBC radio drama! Only it’s not, but they don’t know! Really there’s like, a fake floor, right, and we’re gonna film ‘em all walking in and falling in. How righteous is that? They’ve all got poetry and shit they think they’re gonna read out for their audition but they ain’t gonna get to do it ‘cos that would be snoozeville, yeah? It’s losers in a hole! It’s gonna be righteous!”

Nathan held his hand out for Dan to high five but Dan just stared until Nathan lowered his arm to run his hand through his hair, as if that’d been his plan all along. Dan felt ready to vomit. Claire was directing the segment and Dan felt his cheeks flush and heart begin to pound as he watching his sister arrange a prank that she once would have morally abhorred. Double sided glass covered one wall of the set, so that the unsuspecting auditionees wouldn’t be able to see the cameras filming them and a desk and two “producers” were already in position, ready to trick people in to falling in to a fucking hole. He couldn’t watch it, couldn’t bare to, but even as he limped away he heard the sniggers as the first unsuspecting victim entered and announced that they would be reciting a poem by Keats.


	7. Chapter 7

Jones had once caught Dan with a book of poetry, back when they were only new flatmates, and new lovers, and Dan had braced himself for ridicule because if he’d walked in on someone curled up with a tattered collection of Wordsworth he would definitely have given them shit for it. And Jones had definitely given him an odd look, but then he’d just left it. He’d walked past Dan to the kitchen and put on the kettle to boil and a few minutes later he’d reappeared with two cups of coffee and had settled down on the sofa beside Dan, and just hadn’t mentioned it. Looking back Dan should have worked a lot harder to keep Jones but it was too late now. Jones was long gone, seemed like some sort of dream compared to the idiots Dan now had no escape from, and suddenly, for the first time in too many months, Dan felt anger flare in chest and rattle through his barely healed bones.

He rocked where he stood, feeling the cold wind hit his cheeks as he let the anger build in to a raging, righteous, fire. Barley thought anyone who dared to recite poetry was a social reject and a square, and Dan finally had a plan to get himself rejected by Trashbat. 

He heard Barley’s obnoxious bray of laughter somewhere off to the side, where the crew were setting up for his monologue of the week, but he didn’t let his eyes follow it. He was too busy letting the bile build. He didn’t know why Regent’s Canal had been chosen for that week’s setting, didn’t get how it related to the tripe he was supposed to be spouting about fast food being the new vegan, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get on with it and soon enough he heard someone yell “Action”, took a deep breath and turned to the camera. 

“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains one minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘tis not through envy of thy happy lot, but being too happy in thine happiness - that thou, light winged Dryad of the trees, in some melodious plot of beechen green, and shadows numberless, singest of summer in full throated ease!”   
He hadn’t had a plan, hadn’t known what he would say, but suddenly Dan found himself not just speaking but shouting, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ spilling from his lips like claret, and the camera guy was still filming, despite the yells from Barley and half a dozen others, to cut, to stop, to turn off the camera.

“You think poetry’s for losers, Barley? Well guess what? I’m a loser! Know what else? I’d rather be a loser than whatever this twisted society thinks is cool because what this society thinks is cool is mean and small and ugly and I’m tired of it. I am so fucking tired. Pranking people and hurting people and one-uping people... what does it give you? You’re not creating anything good, you’re not bettering yourselves or this world or brightening anyone’s day. And I hate it. And I hate myself for letting people bully me into being a part of it. And I’m done. And I’m leaving.”  
   
He could see Claire running toward him but he wasn’t stopping and grinned as he saw the sound tech side step to block her way. He hadn’t expected allies.

“Life is short, and unbearably shit sometimes. But even through the shit and the tears there is beauty if you just open up your fucking eyes and look higher than your own dick,” Dan told the camera. “Go out, find a record store, discover a new band, listen to a new album until your heart’s bleeding then go out and tell a friend. Make a damn friend by telling them about the new band you’ve fallen in love with. And actually fall in fucking love with things again, with bands and artists and DJs who’ve retained their integrity, and graffiti and sunlight and nature, wherever you can find it in this godforsaken city. Stop watching this show. Stop giving it your life and your youth and your goddamn soul. Because life is short and some fuck ups cant be fixed. And sometimes you don’t realise you’re in love until he’s walking out of your life and by then it’s too late, it is too late, trust me,” he fought back the sob and carried on. “There’s just so much good shit in this world. There’s a lot of bad too but you have to go looking for the good, and you’re not going to find it on a show that glorifies arsehole behaviour. Screw ironic detachment, relearn how to be earnest and go out and find people to love! Fuck Trashbat, fuck cool, fuck everything that doesn’t make you happy. Read a fucking poem, get a fucking life.” 

“Dan!” Claire was yelling, dodging around the crew so she could tug at his arm, trying to get him to stop, but Dan was done. He threw his arms up, gave the camera what Jones had always referred to as ‘the Royal V’, lost his footing on the crumbling verge and fell backwards in to the canal. 


	8. Chapter 8

Unsurprisingly Dan’s rant didn’t make the final cut. Well, some of it did but it was edited in a way that was unflattering to say the least, and Claire had recorded the scripted monologue instead. It wasn’t ideal but Dan had managed to get himself fired and considered it a win. People loved the new Preacher, he’d been told, though Claire hadn’t come to see him herself. 

Falling in to the canal hadn’t been part of the plan - he hadn’t actually had a plan - but for once he hadn’t been trying to do himself in and it was taking most of his energy to maintain a belief that it hadn’t been the world trying to kill him when he’d finally decided to live.

No one could have predicted that he’d land on a pile of rubble and a rusted bike, hidden just below the water’s surface, except that it was London and they really should have predicted it, and Dan had woken in the hospital, in the same room he’d been before, and had felt a horrible sense of déjà vu. Except that this time there hadn’t been any idiots around his bed. The sound tech had come, her name was Kim and she brought him a box of chocolates, a bunch of flowers and a card for a local AA group she attended. The camera guy had come too, and introduced himself as Dave and offered Dan a place to stay when he got out of hospital because word had got around that Claire had found herself new housemates and that the House of Jones had been given a make-over. Dan tried not to be cross about that, but accepted Dave’s offer, though with a  good amount  of awkwardness, because falling on his head, filling his lungs with canal water, and rebreaking his arm hadn’t miraculously cured his social ineptitude. But he’d done it because he finally wanted to be alive.

Even the kid from the record store had turned up. He’d introduced himself as Shan, and had come bearing a serve of his mum’s goat curry, a jumbo bag of crisps, and half a dozen CDs. Dan had felt strange about taking them until he’d been offered a part time job in the store, serving customers and writing reviews. Part of Dan’s brain screamed at him that it was a trap but the kid didn’t seem an idiot and, on closer inspection, was probably closer to Dan’s age than he’d first thought.

“Write good things,” he told Dan with a grin. “Help bring music to the people and make the world a better place. It lives up to the hype, I promise.” 


	9. Chapter 9

“It’s called YouTube,” Shan told him. “People upload videos of stuff and everyone gets to see it.”

“Great,” Dan grumbled, glaring at the laptop, “another way for people to make tits of themselves online. The world really is doomed.” 

Shan just laughed and Dan let a smile escape as well before he went back to glaring at the harsh light of the computer screen. It was a quiet day in the shop owing to the torrential rain and Shan was supposed to be showing him how to use the new point of sale system they’d got for the store but their attention had drifted somehow and Dan was already steeling himself for the cringes he was sure he would feel when watching the new website that Shan was obsessing over. 

“A lot of the videos are just cats doing dumb but cute stuff,” he offered along with a bag of crisps. “But there is one video that’s been getting a lot of attention and I thought you should have a look.”

A moment later Dan’s own face appeared on the screen, his eyes red and puffy, his hair out of control, and a bloody graze on his forehead. He was a mess and Dan cringed harder than he could possibly have done for any Trashbat style prank video. 

He hardly remembered his last day on the Trashbat set and it was strange to watch his impassioned plea that people turn off their televisions and make the most of their lives. Embarrassed was an inadequate description for how he felt watching the clip, the full, unedited diatribe that had never made it to TV, but he had to give himself credit for being able to recite Keat’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ while obviously pissed out of his skull.

“Who put this on here?” he asked when the video ended but Sean only shrugged.

“Someone by the name of Pingu apparently,” he said, squinting at the username. “It’s had a thousand hits already, that’s wild, that is.”

Shan looked over at his employee/mate. Dan was easy to read and it was obvious that he was working through a whole assortment of emotions at that moment. The day they’d met Shan had seen immediately that Dan was hurting, and that he was lonely. In the two months since he’d come to work at the store that heavy weight of shame and self-hatred had lifted a lot, though not entirely, and it had to be hard to look back at himself at his lowest point.

“You’ve come a long way, mate,” he said simply and was relieved when Dan nodded in agreement.

“Cheers, kid.”

Shan’s next instinct was to offer food, he was one of life’s comfort eaters, but knew that Dan responded better to other emotional crutches. 

“Shall we look at them cat videos now then?”

“Mmm,” Dan hummed though he looked like he wasn’t really tuned in and only snapped out of it after the fifth video of cats getting frightened by their own reflections.

There were things that Dan was still coming to terms with, things that Shan couldn’t really help with, that Kim and AA couldn’t even help with. Shan thought it was probably a matter of the heart but he didn’t want to pry.

Twenty minutes later, when the bell above the door chimed out in the shop he told Dan to stay put in the office and went out to serve counter to help whoever had braved the rain for the sake of music, still wondering what could be done about Dan’s bruised heart.

“Hiya, looking for something particular today?”

The customer turned from his perusal of the discount rack with a winning, crooked, grin, looking over at Shan through his overly long, black, fringe.

“Hey. Actually, yeah, I am. Only the thing is, I’m actually looking for a particular person. Does Dan Ashcroft work here?”


End file.
